Strat pickups for Bright Lights era Richard Thompson tone

This is my first posting here but I've been checking these forums out for quite some time.

Just recently heard "I Want to See The Bright Lights Tonight" by Richard and Linda Thompson. The guitar tone on that record gives me chills. So I decided to put together a parts strat with the hope of getting close as possible to that tone.

RT in talking about about recording the record says he was using a stock 59 strat.

Any opinions on what aftermarket pups are going to get closest to what would have been in a stock 59 strat?

IMO, it's just a stock strat tone, which means vintage type pickups wound to ~ 6K. There are a number of these type pickups out there. A great set that's also fairly priced is the Duncan California 50s, which is a calibrated set of 'vintage staggered' pickups. You can find these for about $150 a set.

a stock strat set will usually sound a little weak in the bridge position, but that's also what makes for the 'quack' in the bridge/ mid notch tone that helps define a strat's tone.

I recommend wiring the bridge pickup to the mid tone, which is done with a simple jumper wire on the switch, a very common mod these days that allows you to roll off some highs on the bridge position.

for some more info, here's an article about Fender pickups which also includes a table of output over the years:fender pickups

As an aside: Richard Thompson, on his website, remembers the amp on those sessions as a "60 Deluxe Reverb" (maybe he meant just a Deluxe) and also attributes his sound to processing through a Fairchild compressor. Probably won't worry about tracking down a Fairchild!